The processing and disposal of organic waste streams are increasingly important topics of environmental, economical and technological concern. Organic waste is generated from different activities, such as industrial activities (e.g., organic waste from food processing manufacturers, restaurants, and grocery stores), agricultural activities (e.g., organic waste from gardens, farms, or cattle farms), and domestic activities (e.g., household waste). There are increasing problems in the handling of these plant and animal organic waste streams due to the continuously increasing amount produced. The problems are global in nature, but are particular acute in areas with very dense human populations and in areas with intense livestock production.
Traditional solutions to the problem of disposing of organic waste, such as landfill, incineration, or composting, are associated with various problems, e.g., processing space, building and operating costs, consumption of time resources, and environmental pollution. Thus, there is an environmental and industrial need to find methods and processes that, as opposed to disposal, allow for the recovery, release and/or utilization of the valuable nutrients in organic waste.
In this respect, several solutions have been proposed in the art. However, none is suitable for the processing of fresh organic waste, e.g., fresh food waste, as presented, for example, in supermarket organic waste, into nutrients that are in a bioavailable form. For example, discussed in US Publication 26194299 (Brinch-Pedersen et al.) is a method for recycling slurry or sewage waste material (e.g., manure) derived from human, animal and industrial areas which must first be separated into liquid and solid fractions. U.S. Pat. No. 6,121,032 (Cooney Jr. et al.) teaches processes and compositions which may be used for facilitating the decomposition of foodstuff waste solids which are to be provided to a sewage treatment system (e.g., garbage disposal and septic tanks).
In contrast to the above-identified solutions proposed in the art, it is one significant object of the present invention to provide a process for releasing and recycling important nutritional elements derived from organic waste in a bioavailable form. The inventors of the present invention have found that there is a large potential for using various kinds of enzymes for solubilizing important nutritional elements present in organic waste (e.g., fresh food waste), thereby facilitating the release and increased availability of the important nutritional elements in a bioavailable form.
The process of the invention has the advantages of being capable of 1) giving a very high degree of released valuable nutritional elements from organic waste, including undenatured protein, natural oils, active enzymes, plant hormones, aerobic bacteria, and aerobic fungi, 2) reducing the overall cost and time for the treatment of waste, 3) increasing environmental sustainability and 4) sequestering of the carbon molecules.
In particular, the sequestering of the carbon molecules is accomplished by keeping the carbon within the end product in accordance with the following principles:                1. The use of fresh organic waste with minimized decomposition prevents the formation of gas (e.g., carbon dioxide (CO2) and/or methane (CH4)). Therefore, at the start of the enzymatic digestion processes as described herein, all of the original carbon content of the organic waste (e.g., fresh food waste) is present;        2. The process is done rapidly and aerobically. in order to minimize decomposition;        3. The resulting hydrolysate may be stabilized (e.g., using acid stabilization) such that decomposition of the enzymatically digested organic material has been minimized and stabilized and is therefore still ‘fresh’ when it is applied to the soil;        4. The resulting hydrolysate may be applied to soil as a fertilizer and this ‘fresh’ product—hydrolyzed food in its natural state—may become food for aerobic soil microbes living in the root zone of the plant. Soil microbes may turn the carbon in this material into plant available nutrients. The carbon is taken up directly into the plant and converted into plant material such that the carbon originally present in the initial organic waste is sequestered and incorporated back into plants; and        5. By supplanting the use of petro-chemical fertilizers and/or compost, carbon sequestration accomplished as described herein helps to prevent the leaching of carbon into the water supply or into the atmosphere by the 50-80% of all chemical fertilizers, including reduction of ammonia volatilization, which turns urea into ammonia gas, and denitrification, where nitrate-N is converted into gaseous forms (nitric oxide, nitrous oxide, dinitrogen). Similarly, supplanting of composting produces similar benefits as a typical compost pile will reduce its size by 50%, of which some significant portion is due to the leaching of carbon into the groundwater and more still is gassed off as carbon dioxide and methane.        